A Place Among Stars
by Chaotic Serenity
Summary: This is not how it happens between them until it does.


**A Place Among Stars**

This is not how it happens until it does.

In the warm, dim light, her skin is pale and flushed, the slightness of her figure highlighted by angles and shadow. All of her humanness bared for him, and he is ever more aware by passing moment of observance of its frailty: the soft curve of a belly, the whiteness of scars and stretchmarks, the hollow of a birdlike neck. Harm comes to her so easy; he imagines the killing is not so far behind. He has seen it tried again and again, at the edge of blades and cusp of bullets, and it is ever the marvel that she stands before him now naked and willing, a marvel that she is still standing at all.

And yet she says -

_Show me._

The wings emerge easily enough. This is the first wound, his Father's first and most difficult gift, and she allows it gently, ever the balm. There is wonder in her eyes, even fear, but he knows these are always kin. He has never known one without the other himself. Scripture is always beauty and trembling; he trembles at the thought of what beauty is in her.

_Show me._ Her tone is patient, even kind.

The eyes then, fire and heat, the promise of pain. He watches the fear trickle through her, the stiffening of muscle and form; this is a weapon against which she has no defense, no hidden armor to catch stray bullets or well-aimed knives. She has put herself in the firing line willingly. Not for the first time, he hates that he is the one to hold the gun.

_Lucifer,_ she says firmly, _Show me. I need to see it._ In this, she will not be moved.

It is the hardest thing that has ever been asked of him, and he has come too far to turn back now. And so it comes slowly, cracks in the façade that has carried him through this human passage and unto her now. It peels away in layers, the onion of necessary lies, the smoke and the mirrors. He can see the moment of his revealed monstrosity writ in the rigidity of her figure, the way her whole body clenches in terror and awe. Never has he wanted to be further away from a moment; everything in him tightens in the awfulness of waiting for the axe to fall, the final cut.

_Lucifer_, she whispers. She comes to him as no one else has, not in millennia past or to come, not in kindness and not in love. Outwards, her hands stretch; beneath her skin is the webbing of veins in delicate wrists, the beating of a human heart. They tremble as she touches him. He thinks of the Fall, the long and dark night through which he had tumbled, and he thinks _this is worse_ \- knows suddenly that it is, because if she follows in his Father's footsteps and turns her face aside, he will fall and fall again endlessly, though darkness and through time, and there will be no place anywhere for him to land. She cannot fail him, not in this.

Though shaking, she does not retreat. On him, her hands are gentle, restless. She touches his face, his mouth, his hanged man's neck. Her hands smooth along flayed and ravaged skin, are gentle where tenderness is not required, though her hands are never bloodied. She presses on him, touching and wanting touch. When she kisses him, her mouth is sweet and open; she tastes of honey and liquor.

He struggles to form words, the shape of them elusive and smoky. There are questions in his him, viscous and heavy, _how_ and _why_ and _please don't_, but he is helpless before her, silent as stone. He thinks of the doorways in time, the eons behind and in front of him, the way memory dulls in its lustre in the spaces where she is not. Her presence is a lodestone to which all things in him are drawn, the centerpoint around which even stars circle, a place where they collapse on themselves.

When the words finally come, they are thorny and bitter on his tongue. _Chloe_, he says, and her name feels like a sin. Fire is catching on his skin. He presses his forehead against hers, eyes closed tight. Against him, her hands are relentless, searching. They slide over his chest and then down, across the expanse of his bodily ruin, the puckering of scars and rent tissue, the sharpness of bones exposed and broken. When she grasps him, his whole body lurches, groaning, curling in on itself.

_Chloe_, his whisper is harsh, _How can this be what you want?_

The stars are shining in her eyes when she looks at him, and the breath that passes from her lips to his is sweeter than Heaven's air. She answers with a kiss, so gentle it makes his bones ache. Smoothing her hands over his face, she cups his chin, strokes a thumb against his lip. _Lucifer,_ she whispers, and her voice is as clear as the sky, _All I see is_ you.

Something in him cracks, unravels. The sound that catches in his throat is small and primal; it cleaves the air, leaves him breathless and dizzy. The world shifts wildly as he falls back, and she is on him, relentless in her pursuit. Her hand is hot around him, stoking a fire that climbs his belly to his heart, one that cannot be satiated even as she eases onto him.

This is not how it happens, how it is meant to happen, until it does. Everything in him shakes for the sight of it, the feel of her mouth against him, the touch of her hand. Over him, she curls like a parabola, filling her concave spaces with all of him. He rises to meet her, his mouth open hotly against her neck, hands moving over her breasts, her thighs, her sex. They move and are moved, hips stuttering unevenly, imperfectly, but it is theirs. For all of his desire otherwise, this is how it happens.

When she comes, she arches into him, wantonly, wanting him. She is fearless in her pleasure: she does not burn when she touches him, does not cower for the sight of his face. He pushes her up and over, hands tangling in her hair, mouth catching on her breast as they tumble. Her body is open under him, soft and slick and impossibly pleasing, and she does not tremble when he shudders over her, into her.

He lingers a long moment, nose pressed in her clavicle, embraced skin to skin along the length of her. Under him, her skin is unblemished, her heartbeat strong; when he finally lifts his head to look at her, her eyes are bright, her smile kind, and she does not flinch when he kisses her, the taste of sulfur on his tongue. At her touch, the fire banks and storm recedes; the hand that strokes her face is whole and unbroken.

They curl together in the velvet dark, an uroboros of hands and mouths and touch. Silence lays between them, a gentle veil; he knows the words are in him, heavy and certain in his heart, though they stick in his throat. Chloe presses a hand to his mouth, her face kind. She promises without words all that goes unsaid, and he trembles as he kisses the center of her palm. He does not think of lands barren and fallow, the liminal spaces of unlocked doors and open flame. With her, the air is quiet and cool, patient and waiting, and time is a depthless pool full of hope and plenty. Somewhere, his stars are burning out in night skies; he knows without knowing that her light never will.

She falls asleep in his arms, the cadence of her heartbeat a gentle song in the night. This was not how it was supposed to happen until it did. For once, he does not question why.


End file.
